Venice is the talk of the week and everybody is leaving for Venice starting Monday and Tuesday. I kept postponing my departure everyday until…no departure.

This is the first time in so many years that I am not joining the opening day and all the events, and the happy atmosphere that the art of the Venice Biennale brings to life.

Art. And Venice. Bliss for me. The water,the canals…Now, sitting in front of my desk with this piece given to me by Holly Salomon, the gallerist, about 30 years ago…

it is Venice in memories of good times together talking art. I think the piece

is by Kim Mc Connell. It is as close as I get this year.

Reading and hearing so much about the Biennale,

the magic of Gioni’s Biennale, all the events,

and how beautiful all is. My head is there…my body is in Milano.

I wish I was at the party to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Fondazione Trussardi with Massimiliano Gioni, this year the curator of the Biennale and congratulate him for the amazing exhibitions of these years, a gift to Milano.

Fighting with the graphics and the hand writing of the book

I am trying to put together about 10 Corso Como.

Already I see it is impossible to do from A to Z – a story that I am living – no last chapter. And I also feel now more strongly than ever, the need to include the use of the hands, real handwriting, and remember that when I started 10 Corso Como there was no internet, no google, and no blogs, And of course now I am glued to Internet to see what is going on in Venice!

It seems incredible that the first desktop publishing actually dates back to 1983. It was called DTP, page layout skills on a personal computer. Desktop produced texts and images with layouts and typography identical to traditional methods. The magic was

to be able to self publish your own newsletters,books,magazines…

In 1983 I was at Vogue and we all shared in the pleasure of creating a magazine.

We didn’t know yet about the community newspaper in Philadelphia that first used DTP.

It was a revolution. Today the magazine Desktop is still a must to read.

What I always loved of Maison Martin Margiela is the meeting of supermodern with roots in all fields, handwriting included. The first shop in Paris I remember there was a wall on which we were all writing quotes or put our signatures…

and the feather pen was de rigueur, the human touch.

I am sure that writing by hand helps our brain receive better feedback than typing on a keyboard. Clearly writing by hand takes longer so the brain has a longer time to influence the structure of our thoughts, our language…

I am sure that children who write by hand learn better than those who type.

This week Milano was host to Wired Next, a festival with the intention to strengthen Milan’s role in the technologies of the future. Today the name Wired is like a brand, available on the web, but when the magazine Wired started,

there was no E book, Google or Facebook.

The impact of this magazine for the last two decades has been unique, the networked world of culture and daily life… all in one magazine explaining it all. I remember when the first issues of Wired were delivered to the 10 Corso Como bookshop,

I used to look at them like strangers – if not enemies – a language I didn’t know or understand. A language that changed our lives and now we all learn to speak.

This year is the Anniversary of that first issue in 1993.

Here, the cover of the first issue, 1993. Using DTP on another magazine,

Electric Word, Louis Rossetto and his partner Jane Metcalfe then went on to publish WIRED. As Rossetto wrote in the first editorial,